Wildflower season is “past peak” and I’d like to remind you that the glorious, youthful, bright flowers now enter the very important stage of making and dispersing seed. Though my camera is still drawn to brightly colored flowers, I try to point it at the broken stems, brown seed pods, and graying leaves that are […]
lawn-reduction
Lawn-less Sustainable Garden Finale
The work on the front yard patios is completed. I planted some grasses and other perennials but am waiting until next winter to plant a few shrubs. As promised in the previous blog post, here is a slideshow containing pictures from late February, when work started, to early April, after it was completed. I’m loving […]
Lawn-less Sustainable Garden (continued)
We are making big changes to our yard. As you may remember from earlier posts, I was not happy with the burned out lawn in the front yard. Years of drought left much of the lawn brown. With city water restrictions, I watered for the large deodar cedar – deeply and infrequently – allowing the […]
Lawn-less sustainable garden
I got rid of the last bit of lawn in Wild Suburbia. We are lawn-less, lawn-free, turf-be-gone, but definitely not grassless! Deergrass, California fescue, melic grass, purple needlegrass, and even the non-grasses, blue-eyed grass (in the Lily Family), and rush (sometimes called rush-grass, in the Rush Family) have a place in my garden and in […]
New native gardens are popping up
During my walks around the city of South Pasadena, I frequently come across new low water-use, native plant landscapes that I have not seen before. Surprised, I ask myself, “When did this happen?” That is just what occurred a couple of weeks ago. Check out these wonderful before and after pictures that I was able to […]
What should I plant?
This is the perfect time to prepare your plant for upcoming native plant sales and fall planting! This slideshow presents garden-worthy plants from woodland, scrubland, chaparral and desert plant communities. Barbara is a South Pasadena-based native plant gardener, horticulturist, writer and blogger. Her recent book, Wild Suburbia: Learning to Garden with Native Plants, guides new […]
Garden care while you travel (Part 2)
The garden prep for our summer absence has been paying off. Yesterday my daughter took me on a virtual garden tour on Facetime. Things are looking good! The native sunflowers (Helianthus annuus) are amazing, reaching 6-7 ft. tall. And the tomato plants have held up well through the heat wave with temperatures in excess of […]
Winter vegetable garden
As a follow up to the post of 2/1/16, Front yard vegetable garden, check out the photos of my winter vegetable garden below (January through today, March 21). The lettuce has been delicious, I love having green onions that are not from Mexico, there are lots of herbs, the kale and Swiss chard are amazing, […]
Front yard vegetable garden
Our front yard makeover began on the night of November 30-December 1 of 2011. The avocado tree in the front yard was “deconstructed” by winds that roared through our area in the wee hours of the night (Cleaning up after the storm). Rather than giving up on this old avocado, we called in an arborist who removed broken limbs […]
Create your own garden paradise
Walking on a quiet street in a Los Angeles suburb, my eighty-year-old father and I approached a lovely adobe home. As we walked along, I noticed that he was slowly shaking his head as he simply stated, “It’s not for me.” I was showing him a garden in my neighborhood that I was especially fond […]